


casino royale

by bellafarallones



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vegas, M/M, Poker, The Moth has a gay little logo that he puts on his stationary, duck got an invitation to an invite-only poker competition, indrid and the amnesty lodge crew are also there, sponsored by a mysterious benefactor known only as The Moth, there's a bom-bom in vegas for some reason, who is rumored to also be one of the competitors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellafarallones/pseuds/bellafarallones
Summary: “Hello, Muffy. Dagwood.” Then Indrid inclined his head to the dealer. “Hello, Charles.”“I don’t know if you’ve told your new friend, but I beat Indrid rather soundly last time around,” Muffy continued. “I’m surprised the Moth gave you a second chance.”
Relationships: Indrid Cold/Duck Newton
Comments: 3
Kudos: 26





	casino royale

**Author's Note:**

> the kpop fandom has the absolute WILDEST aus and a friend of mine who's a bts stan told me about a fic she read where there was an Invite Only Casino which is absolutely not how casinos work but yknow it's a fun concept

Duck arrived a few minutes before ten into a hotel ballroom full of chairs. This was a trick he learned in high school: show up at the last minute and you get to pick who to sit with, rather than waiting for someone to pick you. Here he felt even more out-of-place than he had in school.

Duck stopped at the table full of breakfast pastries and scoped out the room. There were maybe twenty people here. One well-coiffed group was laughing with a timbre that suggested extreme wealth, and were already drinking flutes of champagne they’d gotten from somewhere. 

Another group was more mismatched but seemed no less tightly-knit: a gray-haired woman and a man who looked like a lumberjack, both dressed in red flannel, had turned two chairs around to more easily converse with the young skateboarder-type and the blonde in the row behind them. Two older gentleman in tacky checkered suit jackets seemed to be whisper-fighting in the back row.

Duck did not feel comfortable sitting down with any of these people. The chillest person in the room appeared to be a man of indeterminate age wearing jeans and dark red sunglasses, mostly just because he wasn’t dressed like he cared that there was a crystal chandelier above his head. This was the kind of nerd who played poker for the game or for the money without much care for the trappings of opulence. 

So Duck headed over. He paused for a moment, and the man nodded, which Duck took as a sign that he could sit down. He noticed a fidget cube between the man’s fingers and immediately felt more at ease. This was reminiscent of the kinship he’d felt with the other gays and fat kids in PE class, at least before he’d discovered weed and become suddenly cool enough to play truant entirely.

“Hey,” said Duck. “I’m Duck.”

“Indrid. Pleasure to meet you. You’re new this year?” The glasses were opaque enough that Duck couldn’t tell where he was looking, but his tone wasn’t unfriendly.

“Yes. Have you competed before?”

Indrid nodded. The fidget cube went  _ click-click-click _ . “More people are new this year than usual.” 

Duck didn’t really know what to say to that. “So what do you do when you’re not playing poker?”

“Nothing,” said Indrid, and smiled. “I play a lot of poker. And you?”

“I’m a park ranger. All the way in West Virginia, if you can believe that.”

“How did you end up out here?”

_ Because a very buff hologram woman told me it was my destiny.  _ “It’s a funny story, actually. I’m not normally much of a gambler, but my colleagues and I went out to a casino for someone’s retirement party, and I guess I did pretty good, because I got an invitation.”

Casinos were usually not, by nature of their business model, invitation-only. But for one week in the late summer, one casino on the very edge of the Las Vegas strip was. Duck’s invitation had explained: someone calling themself the Moth organized a private competition, every year, for only the best poker players in the country, and rented out an entire casino with its attached hotel for a whole week to host it. No expense was spared, in either the quality of the room and board or in the volume of the prize money. 

The orientation meeting explained all this again, and each attendee received a folder containing a map of the casino and hotel, a detailed schedule, and a list of the starting brackets. There was also a list of nearby restaurants and attractions for the few afternoons the competitors had off. Each sheet of paper had a little moth silhouette at the top, cuter than Duck would have expected for a mysterious poker benefactor, with rounded wings and fluffy little antennae.

Indrid only opened his folder for a moment before shoving it into his black backpack, but Duck had to scrutinize everything for a few minutes to figure out what he was looking at. They would play one game this morning, and then break for lunch. “I’m starting at table two,” said Duck. “What about you?”

“Ah, me too.”

“Since you’ve been here before I might need you to show me around.”

Indrid laughed a little. “Let me start with getting us to the right table.”

Duck hadn’t been particularly happy to be here, but having at least one friend would make it infinitely more bearable, and he was grateful for that.

Table two turned out to be Duck, Indrid, and two of the champagne-drinkers. One of them, a woman wearing so many pearl necklaces it was a wonder she could keep her neck upright, tittered when Indrid and Duck sat down. “Mr. Cold! I wasn’t sure if I would see you again this year.”

“Hello, Muffy. Dagwood.” Then Indrid inclined his head to the dealer. “Hello, Charles.”

“I don’t know if you’ve told your new friend, but I beat Indrid rather soundly last time around,” Muffy continued. “I’m surprised the Moth gave you a second chance.”

Indrid shrugged. Duck was surprised by his nonchalance at being insulted.

The game began. Duck was rather good at poker - he’d played it with his family growing up, though never for this much fake money. Stacks of green and red chips changed hands. 

He realized soon enough that Indrid had one extraordinary skill: his face was impossible to read. His expression never changed, whatever cards he drew or laid down, to a degree that it was almost unsettling to watch. He came in first or second in the first three rounds, but in the fourth, before anyone had said anything, he’d placed the largest bet of anybody thus far. 

“Pardon me?” said Muffy.

“It’s only fake money,” said Indrid. And he kept his bet, and increased it, and Muffy refused to fold. Finally, after Duck and Dagwood had given up, they laid their cards on the table. Indrid’s hand wasn’t good, middling at best. But Muffy’s was just a little bit worse, and she swept chips disdainfully across the table. 

Indrid shoveled them into his backpack by the handful. At the end of the day, each player would hand in their chips and the rankings would be calculated. 

“How did you know to bet so much?” said Duck. Indrid’s hand hadn’t been nearly good enough to warrant his behavior, and he had to have known Muffy wouldn’t fold to a bluff. 

“I had a good feeling. May I sit with you at lunch?”

“If you can get us there.”

The lunch buffet was excellent. Duck loaded his plate with mashed potatoes, salad, and egg rolls. Indrid took nothing but a cup of M&Ms from the bowl at the end of the line. “I’m following you,” Indrid said. 

There were no empty tables left. The dealers were talking and laughing together; presumably they all knew each other already. There were seats left with the two men in the bad suits, and exactly two seats with the lumberjack family. Duck always felt more at home near people wearing flannel. “Over there?” he said, gesturing with a glass of orange juice.

The lumberjack-looking guy made eye contact and waved when Duck was halfway over, which was promising. 

“Mind if we sit here?”

“Join us!” the lumberjack said. “My name’s Barclay.”

The gray-haired woman spoke next, with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You can just call me Mama. Everyone does. And this is Dani, and Jake. The last time we left him at home he threw what I believe the kids call a rager.”

Jake, who looked to be in his early twenties, only smiled. Alarm bells went off in Duck’s head. No real adolescent would let his mom saying that to a stranger pass without comment. But then again, he also hadn’t been entirely honest about his own reasons for being here.

“I’m Indrid, and this is Duck,” said Indrid while Duck was still thinking about what reason Mama would have to lie.

“Pleasure to meet you,” said Barclay. “Have either of you been to this competition before?”

“I have,” said Indrid. “You’re all new this year?”

“Is it true that the Moth always competes?” said Mama.

Dani snorted. “She’s hoping to meet them.”

“I bet they’re an asshole. I mean, what kind of person makes custom paper napkins?” Mama held up one of the table napkins, which did indeed have the same moth-silhouette logo as the paper.

“If I was looking for someone rich enough to be the Moth, I’d start over there,” said Duck, thumbing over his shoulder at the table where Muffy was sitting.

\--

The next game, Duck played against Dani, Jake and one of the champagne-drinkers. Jake folded fast and didn’t seem to care one way or the other. Dani did a lot of giggling and playing with her hair, but wiped the floor with the rest of them, including Duck. 

After the game Duck found Indrid standing by the open bar with a small midden of maraschino cherry stems on a napkin in front of him. “Hello,” said Indrid. “How was your match?”

“Not good. I mean, I knew I didn’t belong here, but this is really discouraging.”

Indrid shifted from one foot to another. “Would you like some friendly advice?”

“Sure.”

“Your next game. Bet low the first and second rounds, double down the third and fourth rounds.”

“Is that your lucky strategy?”

Indrid drained his drink. “For your next game it will be.” 

“Another Shirley Temple?” said the bartender.

“Yes, please,” said Indrid, and passed his glass back. “You see those two?” he continued to Duck, nodding towards the two old men eating plates of shrimp.

“Yeah.”

“Ned Chicane and Boyd Mosche. Mosche’s the one with the hair. They’re cheating.”

“How do you know?”

“They were both in my last game. Both got cards up their sleeves.”

“Did you tell the dealer?”

The bartender provided another Shirley Temple. Indrid ate the cherry first, and then took a sip. “Why would I? It certainly made the game more interesting. And they did a good job of it, too; if I’d spent that long learning to cheat I would want to be rewarded for it.”

Duck suspected that his initial assessment of Indrid may have been incorrect. “You’re not in this for the money, are you?”

“In this respect I think we are the same.” Indrid tentatively laid his hand, palm cold from holding his cup, over Duck’s on the surface of the bar, and Duck thought wildly that Indrid’s smile was like the moon: bright, but not overpowering. “And if you will excuse me, I’d like to get to my next game,” Indrid continued. He left his empty glass on the bar, transferred his napkin and cherry-stems into the little trash can at their feet, and headed off across the room. 

Duck watched him go. He followed Indrid’s advice in the next game, betting low for the first two rounds and then high, and he won.

\--

Duck stood outside Indrid’s hotel room door debating whether or not to knock. Usually when a guy gave you his hotel room number “in case you wanted to see me later,” it meant only one thing, but Indrid had said it like a person who was not only not soliciting casual sex but for whom the idea of soliciting casual sex was so distant that giving his hotel room number to a new acquaintance was not weird at all.

What if Indrid  _ did  _ want casual sex? Duck didn’t usually do that kind of thing, and if Indrid made a move he’d say so, but now that he was thinking about it, he wouldn’t be opposed to making out a little. Or something.

Anyway, Duck knocked, and Indrid opened the door before he’d had a chance to pull his hand back. “Uh. Hey, Indrid.”

“Hello, Duck! Come in, please.” Indrid stepped aside to let him inside. “Sit anywhere.”

Indrid’s suite was far more lived-in than Duck’s. There was no suitcase on the floor, but a pile of books and leather-bound notebooks on the table, and a few empty mugs next to the sink, as though he’d been living and working here for more than one day. 

“You’ve got a whole apartment in here,” said Duck, sitting down on the couch. There was a pink Post-It on the cover of one of the notebooks, on which Indrid had scribbled  _ no custom napkins next year.  _ “I’ve only got the one room.”

“Being a returning competitor does have its privileges. Can I get you anything to drink? All I have is eggnog, fruit punch, and water, but you’re welcome to it.”

“I’ll take some eggnog.”

Indrid poured a glass for Duck and one for himself and sat down on the other side of the couch. Duck noticed that he was still wearing the same red sunglasses as he’d worn in the fluorescent light of the casino.

“You can turn more lights off, if you want to take your sunglasses off.” 

“Oh,” said Indrid, and reached up half-unconsciously to touch the temple of his glasses, as though he’d forgotten that they were there. “It’s not the light, don’t worry.” 

Indrid set his glass down and stood up. A moment later there was a knock on the door.

“Are you expecting someone?” said Duck.

Indrid tilted his head and frowned, as though this was a difficult question. “Not in the sense that I invited anyone.” Then he opened the door. “Hello, gentlemen.”

Ned Chicane and Boyd Mosche jostled to fit in the doorway. “Mr. Cold!” Boyd boomed. “I was hoping you’d be in.”

“How can I help you?” From where Duck was sitting he could see that Indrid was holding himself stiffly. He was uncomfortable.

Ned cut in. “See, you and we have a few things in -”

“-common?” Indrid looked almost surprised at his own interruption. But he collected himself an instant later. “I do not keep cards in my sleeve.”

“See, that’s why we have so much to learn from each other! We’re looking to diversify our repertoire.”

“And if you don’t mind my saying so, you remind us a little of us when we were your age.”

Indrid perked up at that. “How old do you think I am?”

“Why, you couldn’t be a day over thirty-five.”

“Interesting. Well, thank you for that, but we have nothing else to offer one another.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Goodnight!” said Indrid, and shut the door. He turned back to Duck. “I’m sorry about that.”

“They were asking if you wanted to… teach each other new ways to cheat?”

“That was my understanding. I didn’t report them earlier; I imagine they got the wrong idea.”

“Oh.”

Indrid sat down again and cleared his throat. “Would it be stereotyping you too much as a park ranger to ask you if you wanted to watch this documentary about elephants with me? I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while.”

\--

It was the penultimate night of the tournament, and Duck lay awake well past midnight. He’d had a vision of a beast with four heads and Beacon’s blade stained with black ooze.

His visions were never particularly helpful, and all this one was doing was keeping him awake. He didn’t entirely believe that the things he’d seen would come true, and  _ definitely  _ didn’t believe that he was qualified to deal with a monster with any number of heads.

Duck got out of bed and cracked the window open. The desert looked still and empty. The small creatures going about their nightly business below were invisible from seven stories up. And then Duck saw it: something like a bird but much broader, silhouetted for a moment against the full moon. And then he heard a deep, inhuman scream. 

“God fucking damnit,” said Duck, and shoved his feet into his boots. Then he slung his backpack over his shoulder and left his room to call for the elevator. He was dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt with the Monongahela National Forest logo on the front. 

When he made it outside, he dropped his backpack to the dusty ground and dug Beacon out from underneath a rumpled sweatshirt. 

“Fucking  _ finally, _ ” said Beacon. “Wait, what are we doing?”

“Um,” said Duck. The back door to the hotel, which he’d just come out of, closed with a thunk, and Duck turned to see Mama, Barclay, and Dani. 

“Is that a talking sword?” said Barclay. In the half-darkness it took Duck a moment to register what was different about him: there was hair sprouting between the buttons of his flannel, and his jeans stopped a good three inches above his ankles now and his face was that of an ape. Bigfoot.

“Seems like it,” said Duck. “I thought there was something out here that might need stabbing?”

“I reckon you might be right,” said Mama, pulling out a handgun, which was not all that odd considering that it was Nevada. 

Another inhuman scream came from the desert. Dani screamed back. “YEAGH! Yeah, you’re not the only one who knows how to yell!” Her white-blonde hair, significantly less neatly-combed than earlier, stuck out around her neck from the pulled-up hood of a black sweatshirt. 

“If Duck dies, will one of you be my new master?” said Beacon. “You all seem  _ much  _ cooler than him.”

Duck glowered down at him. “Shut the hell up or you’re going back in the suitcase. Any of y’all want a really mean talking sword?”

“I think this is a conversation for later,” said Dani, and pointed. A beast had leaped from the scrubby bushes at the edge of the hotel parking lot: a chimera, lion and goat and bloodred dragon with a snake for a tail. 

Mama got a shot off into the goat-chest, and the thing bleated in pain, turned tail and started running into the desert. Dani looked at Barclay. “Barclay. We pin it, Duck stabs?”

Barclay nodded and started running. Duck sprinted off after them. He could hear Mama calling after him. “I assume you can use that thing?”

Duck didn’t think of himself as out-of-shape, but Barclay and Dani moved inhumanly fast. The chimera zig-zagged to avoid them. Duck looked up - if you asked him why, he couldn’t have told you - and he saw the winged beast again, now cupping its wings to dive. He yelled “above you!” and Barclay and Dani looked up, but the thing wasn’t going for them; it dived like a hawk and landed hard on the abomination, pinning it to the ground.

It had wings and antennae like a moth, round red eyes, and the torso and legs of a human, and swatted away the snake-tail with two sets of human hands. “A little help here?”

Dani reached the chimera next, threw herself down on top of the snake-tail and kept the hind legs from kicking, while Barclay held down its shoulders.

“Apologies for my lack of offensive capabilities,” said the mothman stiffly.

When Duck reached them he was out-of-breath, unhelped by Beacon’s commentary as he ran (“Go faster! We’re gonna miss the chance to kill it!”). Still breathing hard he raised Beacon above his head and brought it down again, separating three heads from three necks in one swing. 

The chimera melted into black ooze and disappeared.

“Nice one,” said Barclay. Then he looked up at the mothman. “You’re a sylph. What are you doing here?”

The mothman fluttered his wings. “You weren’t going to catch it. It was going to get away if I didn’t stop it. Also yes. But I’m very sorry - I must excuse myself - but it was lovely to meet you all?” Then he took off, ungracefully at first, and fluttered back towards the hotel. Duck watched him go, tracking the dark silhouette against the pale side of the building, watching him fly up and up and land on a top-floor balcony. 

Duck narrowed his eyes. He knew whose balcony that was. “What’s a sylph?”

Barclay pulled a bracelet out of his pocket, slipped it on, and shrank back into human form. “Mama’s better at having these conversations than I am.” Then they began the trudge across the desert back towards the hotel. 

Duck said that he wanted to drop Beacon off, but after that and before regrouping with Mama and the others, he ran up to the tenth floor and banged on a particular door. 

Normally Indrid opened the door the instant Duck’s hand touched it, or even a moment before. Now, waiting forty-five seconds just increased Duck’s panic. But Indrid did open the door.

“Um,” said Duck. He didn’t know what to say, both because there was no good way to say “I’m just checking to see if mothman attacked you,” and because Indrid was shirtless. Still wearing the sunglasses, though.

“Are you okay?” said Indrid. “What’s going on?”

“I’m good. Nothing. Just. Uh. Checking if you were okay? Sorry, did I wake you up?”

Indrid smiled. “I’m fine, Duck. And no, you didn’t wake me up,” he said, but he sounded exhausted

“Okay. Well. I’ll go, then. I just wanted to… check. I’ll see you in the morning, I guess?”

Indrid did a delicate little finger-wave. “Goodnight, Duck Newton.”

Then Duck trudged down four more flights of stairs to the room number Barclay had given him. Maybe Indrid had been playing video games or something and hadn’t noticed the mothman choosing his balcony to land on.

Jake, seemingly wide-awake despite the hour, opened the door. “ _ Bienvenido a mi casa _ ,” he said. Mama was sitting in the room’s only chair, while Dani perched on one of the two beds and Barclay sat cross-legged on the floor. Every surface seemed to be covered in cans of Monster energy drink, and Duck could see through the open bathroom door that someone had filled the bathtub up with ice. 

“Want a Monster?” said Jake. “Or some animal crackers?”

“I’m good, but thanks.”

Jake gestured towards Duck’s shirt with a can of Monster. “Hey, you’ve been to Monangahela?”

“I work there. I’m a park ranger.”

“Shit, no way! We live in Kepler!”

Duck blinked. “Really?”

“Are you the Moth?” said Mama.

“No. Why would I be the Moth?” said Duck.

Mama picked up a can of Monster from the table, looked disdainfully at it, and then cracked it open. “We believe that the Moth has supernatural powers, specifically that they can see the future. We’re trying to recruit them to our organization. We’re called the Pine Guard, and we fight abominations such as the one you helped us dispatch today. Maybe you’d be interested in joining us, too, especially since you live in Kepler.”

“What if the actual moth creature we just encountered is the Moth? That would be thematically appropriate,” said Duck.

“It would explain why the Moth is never seen,” said Barclay. “Maybe he doesn’t know how to disguise himself? Any human who got that rich and does stuff like organizing poker competitions would want to be seen.”

“You’re sure neither of you have ever met that sylph before?” said Mama.

Dani and Barclay shook their heads.

“Sorry, but what’s a sylph?” said Duck.

Mama took a sip of Monster and grimaced. “The sylphs are the natives of a world called Silvain. They are not human, but can appear so through the use of magical disguises.”

“And you all are sylphs?”

“They are,” said Mama, gesturing around to Dani, Barclay, and Jake. “I’m as human as you are.” Then she screwed Duck with a suspicious look. “Probably moreso.”

“Um, I have a talking sword and a buff hologram lady shows up every so often to tell me that I need to follow my destiny? And I sometimes have useless psychic visions? But I’m pretty sure I’m a human.”

Barclay spoke next. “It doesn’t make sense that the sylph we just met wouldn’t know how to disguise himself as a human. He spoke English fine. And unless he came to Earth through a different process than we did, he must have been here a lot longer than us if none of us know him.” He looked up to Jake, who was eating pink-frosted animal crackers from the container. “You’ve never met any moth people who came to Earth, did you?”

Jake shrugged. “You said he didn’t want to hang around? Maybe he didn’t want you to see his human disguise.”

“How do these disguises work?” said Duck.

“Ours are enchanted into an accessory,” said Barclay. “Jake and I have bracelets, and Dani wears a ring. We transform by taking them on and off.”

So whoever the mothman’s human form was would wear some accessory that they’d never take off. A thought coagulated in Duck’s head, and he stood up and stretched. “Well, it was great talking to y’all, but I think I’m going to try to get some sleep.”

“If you feel like coming by in the morning, I’ve been making pancakes every day for all of us,” said Barclay.

“He packed like three pounds of pancake mix in his suitcase,” said Mama.

“My own  _ proprietary  _ pancake mix. The suite Mama and I are staying in has a real kitchen.”

“Thanks for the offer,” said Duck. “I just might.”

He did not, in fact, go back to his own hotel room to go to bed. Instead he climbed four flights of stairs. Indrid’s door was already open, and Indrid was standing in it. He’d put on a hoodie, one Duck recognized as having loaned him two days ago and never gotten back. 

“I imagine you’d like to come in?” said Indrid.

Duck nodded, and followed him into the suite. Indrid shut the door behind them, and returned to a cup of presumably eggnog that he’d left on the coffee table. 

“I don’t know how to say this, but are you-”

“-an alien? Yes.”

“You’re mothman.”

“That’s not the name I prefer, but yes.”

“What name do you prefer?”

“Indrid Cold.”

“Oh.”

Indrid sipped his eggnog in silence. His glasses gave nothing away, just like the round red eyes of a creature with wings.

“And you’re -”

“-the Moth? Also yes. And Mama and her friends were looking for me.”

“I didn’t tell them. I wanted to check with you first.”

“I appreciate that, Duck Newton. I can tell them myself, and in the morning I anticipate doing so.”

Questions chased each other back and forth in Duck’s mind, but this was still Indrid, Indrid with whom he’d always felt at ease, Indrid who drank too much sugar and watched nature documentaries with him. “Why all this?” said Duck, indicating the room but meaning everything. The competition. The mystery. The paper napkins with the moth-silhouette logo. 

Indrid set down his cup. “I can see the future. But, as I think you understand better than most, visions are not always as helpful as they could be. I left West Virginia in 1967 and came to Las Vegas, where I found I could make money rather easily.”

“Because of the future-vision.” 

“Yes. Once I’d established myself, I organized this competition to... find out if I was alone. My gift is rare, even on Silvain, and I thought that if there was anyone else like me, anyone else who could see the future not just in dreams, this is exactly the kind of event that would draw them. And if someone came who was like me, I would know, because they’d be the only person who could beat me without my letting them.”

“And when I showed up? When the other Sylphs showed up? Did you know from the start what would happen?”

“No. Beyond a few minutes into the future my visions are fragmentary, inexact. My attraction to you has been entirely mundane. As for the others, I knew that they were Sylphs, but I could not divine their intentions. For all I knew they had come to drag me back to Silvain.”

“They came to recruit you to something called the Pine Guard to fight monsters with them.”

“I suspect that at this point they shall find me an easy mark. Thank you for helping me work all this out, Duck.”

“Any time.” Duck had gotten what he’d come for, but he didn’t want to leave, and Indrid wasn’t urging him towards the door. So he sat down on the couch. 

“How do you feel about all this?” said Indrid.

“Can’t you tell that with your future-powers?”

Indrid set down his cup and sat next to Duck on the couch. From this angle Duck could see underneath his glasses, his long eyelashes and dark eyes in profile. “No,” said Indrid. “I can anticipate a few possibilities, but I do not know what choice you will make.” He smiled, turned his head to look into Duck’s eyes. “The order of the cards is determined as soon as they’re shuffled. People are a little more interesting.”

Duck leaned forward, slowly enough that even a man without future-vision could see what was coming, and pressed his lips to Indrid’s. Indrid kissed him back, and made a small happy noise after Duck pulled away. 

“I’m glad you have your own magic stuff going on,” said Duck. “I had been wondering how I was supposed to tell you about the whole talking sword destiny thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> stern is also definitely at this competition and probably thinks the pine guard are some kind of gay mafia, and aubrey is a fabulous vegas magician. come hit me up @ bellafarallones on tumblr!


End file.
